Arts & Entertainment

Best Band Name Houston 2001 - Lucky Boyd & The Toll Booth Violators

Readers' Choice: ZZ Top

Houston's band names are in a rut. Great swaths of them fail to inspire anything at all. Not a smile, not a chuckle, not an appreciative nod -- nada. Instead, all too many bands try to be clever by spelling, capitalizing and punctuating oddly (Soular Slide, dr:op:fr:am+e, 30footFALL). Among our favorites, however, are the history-laden Jimmy Raycraft & The Roaring Calhouns and the euphonious The Fatal Flying Guilloteens. Nods go out to Jug O' Lightnin' and Pure Rubbish for evoking their respective spooky Southern and gutter-punk sounds with resorting to the literal. Which brings us to this year's winner: Lucky Boyd & The Toll Booth Violators, country rockers from down Galveston way. There's something in the mock menace of the name that really makes us smile.